Samantha Reynolds
]] )]] Name: Samantha Reynolds Gender: Female Age: 18 Hometown: Seattle Grade: 12 Hobbies and Interests: Swimming, jogging, rap and hip hop music, studying Appearance: At 5’10” and 145 pounds, Samantha is a tall and slender girl. She has dirty blond, shoulder-length hair, which she keeps neatly parted down the center. Her hair tends to be curly, especially in high humidity climates like that of Seattle. She has pale blue eyes, and wears square-framed glasses when she is not swimming. Samantha’s face is narrow and somewhat somber; she does not smile very much, and when she does, she does not show her teeth. For the most part, her face is well-proportioned: she has thin lips, a slightly pointed chin, and a somewhat high brow. Her nose is the exception to this, being noticeably long. This is one of the only physical features that Samantha is unhappy with. Samantha is fair-skinned, with generally good complexion. She has made sure to cultivate fairly good posture, though if she is upset or discouraged she tends to slouch. Samantha tends to wear clothing that edges towards the formal, particularly button-down blouses and shirts and slacks or smooth, mildly-colored skirts. All of her clothing is fairly modest. None of her skirts are shorter than knee-length, and her shirts are always fully-buttoned, so as not to reveal any of her chest. When she is working out, she forgoes this attire in favor of practical garb (sweat suits and swim suits, as appropriate). Biography: Growing up, Samantha was a fairly typical child, slightly brighter than average, but in no way a standout. Her parents, a doctor (her father) and a professor (her mother) pushed her to excel in everything she did, and, while she was never at the top of her class in elementary and middle school, she did well. Throughout her childhood, Samantha also looked up to her older sister, Rachel. Rachel was four years her elder, and always seemed incredibly mature and talented to her impressionable younger sister. Upon entering middle school, Samantha made her first close friends, joining a clique or girls a grade higher than her. These girls were not the sort of people Samantha’s parents approved of. They were loud, sometimes rude, and on the lower-performing side of the academic scale. They also seemed incredibly cool and mature to Samantha, though in a different way than her sister did. These girls introduced Samantha to hip hop and rap music, genres she had never experienced before, which she still enjoys to this day. Samantha’s grades steadily declined, in part due to the influence of her new friends. Her parents worried; however, since she was sill slightly above average, they did not directly intervene. Rachel eventually had a chat with her, and explained that she did not have to emulate her friends in all aspects. Samantha took this lesson to heart, and by the middle of seventh grade had pulled her grades up to a higher level once again. Samantha’s clique disintegrated near the end of seventh grade, when the ringleader was expelled after being caught smoking marijuana in the bathroom at school, and a subsequent search of her locker revealed a large pocketknife. Samantha, shocked by the event, avoided her other former friends for the remainder of the year. After that, they left for high school, leaving Samantha alone. She did not bond with anyone for the remainder of middle school. In high school, at her parents’ suggestion, Samantha took up swimming and track. She found that she enjoyed jogging to sort out her thoughts, but not the competitive aspects of track, so she quit the team, although she made it a point to jog several miles a couple of times a week afterwards. She remains on the swim team. Her swimming performance is on the lower end of the team, but she enjoys it enough that she has stuck with it and practices regularly. Early in high school, Samantha found a new group of friends, one far more like her. They were all upper-middle class girls, who were never involved in anything remotely questionable. All of them fell squarely in the academic middle-ground. Samantha found her high school classes more challenging than those in middle school, but was content to drift down to average marks. At the end of Samantha’s first year of high school, she received devastating news: Rachel called home in a panic because she had failed her first year of college classes, and, worse, had become pregnant. Her parents, rather than reacting supportively, disowned her. For the first time, Samantha found herself at odds with her parents, resenting their treatment of her sister. Soon, however, that resentment transferred itself to Rachel; since Samantha had to deal with her parents every day, she found it easier to blame her sister for her poor choices, and to tell herself that if her sister had only been more responsible, she would not have had a falling out with her parents. Her sister’s fall from grace shocked Samantha, and spurred her to work her hardest to avoid meeting a similar fate. She began to obsess over her schoolwork, pushing aside her friends and most of her hobbies to make time for studying. She was able, with a large amount of work, to drag herself to the tops of her classes and maintain that position. She also worked to distance herself from anything she perceived as dangerous or scandalous. She stopped gossiping about boys to her friends on the rare occasions that she spent time with them, and actively shunned anyone in a relationship. She developed a strange, contradictory view of romance; on the one hand, she feared and avoided it, believing it would destroy her like it had her sister, and on the other, she secretly yearned for it, both out of typical teenage hormones and because it was something she viewed as forbidden. As the years wore on, Samantha’s behavior changed very little. Her friends, initially shocked by her abrupt change of demeanor, soon realized that it was going to stick, and began avoiding Samantha themselves. By the end of her Junior year, she no longer had friends; instead, she had a social circle of like-minded individuals with whom she studied and worked on class projects. When given an option in class, she worked alone, loathe to entrust her grades to anyone else. When forced to work in a group, she typically did all the work for her partners, for the same reasons. This made her somewhat popular among the lower-achieving members of her classes, something she did not care for at all. Samantha became known around the school as a fairly cold, unfriendly individual, a reputation she did not feel she deserved, but made no effort to change. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, some boys were drawn to her, and she was asked to several school dances. Samantha was made highly uncomfortable by the attention. She recognized that she was fairly attractive, and worried that the boy’s aims were less than noble. On another level, though, she was drawn to the prospect of a romance. She fought this traitorous urge by flatly and bluntly denying her would-be suitors, and by the middle of her Senior year, the advances had halted entirely. While this was, to an extent, relieving, Samantha also misses the attention, and unfairly blames the boys for not making more of an effort to secure her affections. While she seemed fairly in control and confident at most times at school, Samantha actually spent much of her high school career in a state of extreme stress. While intelligent, succeeding at the levels she had set for herself required a tremendous commitment of time and energy on Samantha’s part. Retaining her position on the swim team did as well; though she was able to scrape by, Samantha was simply not naturally built for the sport, something which often pushed her to frustration. Samantha did not cope well with her stress. She used her jogs as a way to think things through, decompress, and come to terms with her feelings, but, as time went on, the method proved insufficient; her jogs grew longer and longer, yet she still returned home frustrated and cranky. Her parents, pleased with her academic success, chose to ignore indicators of her personal problems, trusting that she would let them know if anything was wrong. Samantha, however, no longer trusted them enough to do so; having seen how they treated her sister, she felt that admitting any weakness to them would be a disaster, and destroy her image in their eyes. Samantha has had several breakdowns during her high school career, sparked by everything from performing poorly on a math quiz to being overloaded with homework. During each of these episodes, she emotionally collapsed, raging against herself, her schoolwork, her parents, her sister, and the world as a whole, then spending several days in an emotionally-charged state of apathy. Each of these breakdowns caused her problems in her classes, forcing her to work even harder to pull herself back up. She managed to hide these incidents from her parents, feigning illness to cover up her true feelings. Another factor contributing to Samantha’s stress is her average performance freshman year. The mediocre grades she received at that time have prevented her from having any chance of becoming valedictorian, and have lowered her overall GPA. She harbors some resentment towards her past self, for not taking things seriously enough, though she is also jealous of her more carefree prior existence. Now, Samantha has nearly completed high school. With the end in sight, she has been both energized and disheartened; while she has nearly succeeded at her goals, on some level she resents the fact that she has spent most of her time working without much in the way of fun or release. Secretly, she longs for more meaning in life, and a more interesting life in general. She has no plans to bring these hopes to fruition, though; in her future she sees college, graduate school, a career, and ever-mounting stress levels and workloads. Advantages: Samantha is fairly good shape. She has endurance while running and jogging, and knows how to swim well. She is also fairly intelligent, and very dedicated when she sets her mind on a goal. Disadvantages: Samantha has poor stress management skills, and does not tend to cope in healthy ways. She comes across as cold and impersonal, even when she is not trying to. She pushes people away, which could be fatal in this sort of environment. She is also a poor judge of character, tending to group people based on first impressions or prejudices rather than their actions, which could lead to severe problems if she trusts or mistrusts the wrong person. --- Power: Facial Morphing Conclusion: Subject C01 has spent her whole life judging books by their covers, and now she has the power to change her own at will. I've never been a fan of irony, but at least no-one will recognise her body. The above biography is as written by KillerVole. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made. Evaluations Kills: None Killed By: Entered a Danger Zone Allies: Otis Adelaide Enemies: Cristo Ruiz, Ashlie Jackson, Chris Richardson Mid-game Evaluation: '''Samantha awoke on the slope near the ravine. Initially reluctant to accept the reality of the situation, she attempted to test it by firing her provided pistol, reasoning that, if everything was simply a joke, the weapon would be inoperable. Unprepared for the recoil and force, she nearly fell into the ravine, barely recovering. Following her near brush with death, Samantha had a brief meltdown, crying and screaming, before attempting to leave the area, fearful of having drawn attention. On the rope bridge over the ravine, she encountered Penelope Rivers. Samantha was able to get the drop on Pippi, holding her at gunpoint. She also noticed that she could hear Pippi's thoughts, and planned to kill the girl should the telepathy turn out to be two-way. Once she had determined that it was not, she and Pippi talked for a time, Samantha quickly discounting the other girl as an idiot. During the conversation, Samantha, convinced by Pippi's telepathy of the reality of the powers, used her own to adjust her nose; she was surprised to discover that doing so was incredibly painful, involving the shattering, stretching, and reforming of cartilage and bone. Having again made a large amount of noise by screaming, Samantha departed, making it clear that Pippi was not welcome to follow. Samantha made her way down the mountain, pausing briefly in the cable car station. She considered riding the cars to the radio tower and using it as a fortress, but, after some contemplation, dismissed the idea, fearing that someone else would already be up there, picking people off, or that the station would become a danger zone, forcing her to escape through a choke point. Knowing that other people would be drawn to the tower, Samantha left the premises, seeking a better place to hide for a time. Samantha found temporary sanctuary at the shack. While crossing the deep water between it and the shore involved some awkwardness and difficulty, she figured that it would provide her with a decent amount of solitude and safety. Before long, though, she was interrupted by Otis Adelaide, who was also crossing to the shack. Samantha's initial impression of Otis was quite positive, though she tried to keep him at arm's length, not entirely trusting his motives. Still, she allowed him to come over to the shack, and invited him inside. Samantha sat down on the cot, trying to make herself comfortable, but instead discovering that it had an occupant. Otis pummeled the figure, attempting to preempt any attack, only to discover that it was the eyeless corpse of Billy-Jay Clarke. Horrified at the discovery, he and Samantha left. The two formed a sort of alliance, searching along the beach at the cove for a place to rest for the night. While Samantha did her best to be cautious, they were still spotted by Cristo Ruiz, who opened fire on them, targeting Otis first. They managed to avoid being hurt in the preliminary assault, though Samantha panicked. When Cristo got closer, however, she was able to get her gun out and hold him at bay. The standoff became increasingly tense, with neither side willing to give in. Finally, Cristo proposed unarmed combat between himself and Otis. Samantha was leery of the offer, but, unable to stand the stress of the situation, agreed when Otis indicated his approval for it. As Otis charged, Samantha realized that Cristo was tricking him, but was too late to intervene. Otis was shot in the lung, and fell to the ground, mortally wounded. Samantha tried to run to him, but Cristo stopped her, insulting her and announcing his intent to kill her, too. Before he could follow through, though, Otis grabbed his leg, activating his power in a manner amplified by the extreme circumstances, and absorbed Cristo's consciousness, killing him. Samantha went to Otis, but was unable to help him. She watched as he died, horrified by the fact that both he and Cristo had seemed relatively peaceful in death. Overcome by stress and fear, Samantha had another breakdown, activating her power repeatedly to drown everything out behind the pain. Finally, she pulled herself out of her stupor, resolving to do whatever it took to survive, and taking the supplies and weapons of both dead boys. Determined not to leave herself vulnerable, Samantha chose to forgo sleep, instead using th epain induced by her power to prevent herself from drifting off. After the announcement aired, she went to the black forest, attempting to find the weapons and equipment of Fredrick Slagenger and Judith Vibert, who had been caught in the zone after the first announcement. Unable to locate the bodies, Samantha paused for a moment, when she was approached by Ashlie Jackson. Samantha held Ashlie at gunpoint, telling her not to try anything. When the girl failed to respond, Samantha fired a warning shot and told her to leave. Just then, Pippi showed up. Samantha called out to her for backup, and Ashlie, believing the two to be allies, opened fire on Pippi, killing her. As Pippi died, she sent a message to Samantha, telling her to run, then unleashed a psychic scream, hitting everyone in the area with the force of her death. Samantha recovered fairly quickly, running for cover while attempting to kill Ashlie. Ashlie managed to flee the scene. During the confrontation, Chris Richardson showed up, stating that he'd been an ally of Pippi's. Samantha claimed Pippi's pack and weapons, then attempted to relieve Chris of his gun, figuring that the best strategy was to control as much of the firepower on the island as she could and then wait out all the others. Chris acquiesced, but activated his own power, inundating the wet grass with electricity. When Samantha tried to retrieve the gun, she was shocked and jerked backwards. Recovering, she attempted to shoot Chris, but he reclaimed his gun and escaped. After her encounter with Chris, Samantha suffered a severe crisis of confidence, questioning her methods and motives. She resolved not to murder anyone, instead planning to avoid conflict as long as possible, and then fight fairly. She returned to the ravine, and spent time pondering her chances, resolving even more strongly to survive. She spent some time wondering about other possibilities, including whether, with Otis' help, she would have been able to escape or otherwise defeat the system. The area was soon declared a danger zone. Samantha lingered for a little longer than she should have, causing the tracking device in her arm to buzz, and forcing her to quickly leave the area. Samantha wandered the island, encountering nobody until, on the other side from the ravine, she met up with Taryn Gregory and Katherine Black. She spoke with the two for a time, sharing her surplus food and water with them. Throughout the encounter, Samantha was blunt nearly to the point of rudeness, at one point questioning the pair's plans should they be the final survivors. Kate misinterpreted the question, discussing her home life and plans after leaving the island, which led Samantha to question her own feelings on the subject. She concluded that her life from before was pretty much over, but was unwilling to give up hope of surviving. Throughout the discussion, she became more and more nervous, losing her resolve to play fair and fighting the urge to attempt to better her odds by attacking Taryn and Kate. She kept the two girls at a distance, deciding to leave them in short order. After a brief conversation, she left, stating that she was going to survive, and telling the other two to do their best to win in the event that she couldn't. Samantha once again aimlessly made her way around the island, pondering their situation. She became increasingly confused, tangled up in a burgeoning disgust for humanity and a desire to live. Finally, she ended up by the coast. There, after a short time in thought, she came to a resolution. Discarding her weapons, she spoke for a time before entering the danger zone with a smile on her face. Confident that she was being watched, she moved deeper into the zone, ignoring the danger signals from her tracking device, before eventually stopping and standing still, waiting. '''Post-Game Evaluation: '''Subject C01 was a very interesting specimen, because she often took unusual approaches to situations. This was especially true of her power, which was never put to its most obvious use as a means of disguise. Had she not opted out of our experiment in the late game, it would have been interesting to see what she did. '''Memorable Quotes: "I don't know if you noticed, no, wait, if you're here you did, but I made a mistake back there. I made a lot of noise, and now you made a lot of noise, so there are probably people coming to kill us both right now." - Samantha attempts to explain her caution to Pippi "It appears my 'power' has some drawbacks." - Samantha, having learned of her power's side effects "Should've been a bit quicker on the draw there, jackass." - Samantha manages to force a standoff with Cristo "Get the fuck out of here. I don't know what your game is, and I don't care. I'm too tired to deal with this right now. Maybe I'll catch you in the finals, and we can pick up this delightful interaction then. Maybe I'll never see you again. Here's hoping that's the case." - Samantha to Ashlie "I need your gun. Slide it over nice and easy, and nothing unpleasant needs to happen. I won't take your food or your knife. I don't want to hurt you." - Samantha attempts to rob Chris "I haven't killed anyone. I've tried twice. Once was in self defense, once was a huge mistake. I've got more bread and water than I could consume in our time left here, so you're welcome to some if you want. I just... need some time. Some time with people who aren't trying to kill me, for a change. I guess I'm proposing a little truce." - Samantha bluntly proposes a ceasefire "When you take her, put a round in her for me, okay?" ''- Samantha to Taryn on the subject of Ashlie ''"Taryn, what I'm going to do is live. Maybe I'll see you later. Maybe not. Honestly... I don't know what to hope. But hey, if I can't win, you do your damn best, you hear me? Both of you." - Samantha parts ways with Taryn and Kate Other/Trivia *Due to KillerVole not realizing that the Evo boards were not yet visible to non-moderators, Samantha's profile was submitted several hours before the Evo boards went public. *For a time, Samantha was slated to become a player in her desire to live. After her failure to kill Chris Richardson, these plans were dropped, and her eventual fate was concocted instead. *Samantha was one of four characters to end their game in a danger zone, and one of two to do so intentionally. She was the only character to enter a danger zone after it had been established, with full knowledge of what it was. Threads Below is a list of threads that contain Samantha, in chronological order. *Rise Above *Better Make Up Your Mind *Sanctuary (of the temporary variety) *An Ode to Adelaide *Aftermath *Wanna Change My Clothes, My Hair, My Face *Miseria Cantare *Live Your Thoughts Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF Evolution or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Samantha Reynolds. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here! Category:SOTF: Evolution Category:Characters